


The Thunder Rumbles

by LegionofShadowhunters



Series: City of Parenting [2]
Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare, Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, M/M, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6884677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegionofShadowhunters/pseuds/LegionofShadowhunters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A late night storm wakes up the boys and they run to Alec and Magnus's room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thunder Rumbles

A particularly loud rumble of thunder woke Alec up much sooner than he would have liked. When he got home from patrol a couple hours ago he was on his twenty sixth—dangerously close to twenty-seventh—hour without sleep. Jace, Clary, and Alec had agreed to split Simon and Izzy’s shifts for a few weeks while Simon was away recruiting and Izzy had gotten too pregnant to safely patrol.  
As excited as he was for his sister and brother-in-law, Alec really missed sleep. He had fallen asleep on top of the covers, still mostly in gear. He didn’t remember taking his boots and jacket off but they were in a pile by his side of the bed. He had one hand tucked under his pillow and the other arm was thrown lazily over Magnus’s waist.  
At first glance, his boyfriend seemed to have slept through the thunder, but Alec knew him well enough that he was simply denying being awake. “Three…two…one…,” Magnus sighed the countdown as lightning flashed outside.  
Within seconds Alec heard the faint sound of little footsteps running down the hall over the sound of the rain pouring outside. Their bedroom door creaked open and Alec lifted his head to see over Magnus even though he knew exactly what the two little heads sticking inside the door looked like.  
Their two boys were peeking in. Rafael, the older of the two, had created a mask that Alec assumed was supposed to make him look calm but it only succeeded in managing to make him look more startled by the loud thunder. Max was openly whimpering, Alec could see in the dim light that he was clutching a stuffed cat to his chest.  
“Daddy, Papa,” Rafael spoke clearly and quietly into the room, “The storm woke us up and—,“ Another loud rumble of thunder cut him off and both boys ran into the room and climbed up on the bed without hesitation.  
The two of them wiggled their way in between their fathers. Max curling up next to Alec and Rafael attaching himself to Magnus.  
“Only a couple seconds off,” Alec commented as Max started to pull the covers down to crawl under them.  
Magnus met Alec’s gaze and shrugged, “I was actually a little surprised it took them this long. I didn’t think you would get woken up.”  
“Daddy,” Alec looked down at his youngest son. Max had tucked his stuffed animal into the covered next to him, “Why aren’t you in jammies? It’s bedtime.”  
Alec smiled and kissed the dark hair on the top of Max’s head. “I was really sleepy when I got home, so sleepy that I feel asleep with my clothes on. You wait here with Papa and Rafe while I go change.” Max nodded and cuddled closer to his brother and Magnus.  
Alec listened to Magnus mutter comforting comments to the boys while he grabbed a clean t-shirt and a pair of sweats. Alec remembered when they first adopted Max and Magnus would get flustered every time their son would make the slightest cry. Now Magnus didn’t hesitate when Max scraped his knee or Rafael woke up from a nightmare.  
He smiled as he stepped into the bathroom to change and wash himself up a little. There wasn’t much of a point in taking a shower at three a.m. but a little soap and water took the dirt and dried blood of his arms.  
Alec silently thanked the darkness for keeping Max or Rafael from noticing he had gotten hurt. An iratze had healed the scratch running up his forearm without a problem but he didn’t like the boys to see any blood on him. Rafael had been with them a little over six months and it had just been recently that his nightmares had started to become less frequent.  
Before Alec had found little Rafael, scared of the monsters and not understanding what he was seeing, he hadn’t been quite so careful about covering up injuries. He had made sure to apply iratzes before entering the loft to heal any wounds and to cover up anything that would take longer than a few minutes to heal. Max was used to it. As far as their youngest son was concerned, it was totally normal for Alec to leave at odd hours and return a few hours later with his clothes torn and dirty.  
He wanted to be careful about Rafael seeing him and getting frightened. He start zipping his gear jackets up all the way to minimize the view of any damage before coming into the loft. If he could, he slipped in quietly while the boys were playing or eating and cleaned himself up before they even knew he was home.  
He shut the bathroom light off and walked quietly over to the bed. The boys hadn’t fallen asleep yet but Magnus was working on it. “Okay, now the next time you see lightning count really slowly,” Magnus instructed softly.  
Another lightning strike lit up the sky above New York as Alec slipped under the covers. Max and Rafael began counting in soft voices, “One…two…three…four…” Thunder rumbled and the both stopped.  
“Papa,” Rafael sounded more nervous than before. Alec was a little worried that whatever Magnus had planned was backfiring, “It got closer.”  
Alec moved over so he could wrap his arm around both boys. “Daddy,” Max whined and squirmed so he could lay on his back, “You’re squishing Whiskers.”  
Max tugged on the tail of the toy Alec had laid on by accident. Alec pulled the toy out from underneath him and set it one Max’s stomach. “My sincerest apologies, Whiskers,” Alec said in an exaggerated polite voice. Max giggled and hugged the toy closer to his chest.  
Alec laid his head down on the pillow next to his son’s and listened to Magnus explain that the sooner the storm got here the sooner it would be gone to Rafael. “Pretty soon when you see lightning and start counting you’ll be able to get to a higher number before the thunder rumbles. That will mean the storm is going away,” he said softly.  
“I bet if you go to sleep now the storm will be completely gone in the morning,” Alec knew it wouldn’t work but he was too tired to think of a more clever way to get them to go to sleep.  
“But, Daddy, it’s loud,” Rafael whined.  
Alec gently brushed Rafael’s hair off his face. “I know, Rafe. But you need sleep.”  
“See, your brother already fell asleep,” Magnus pointed out. “If the thunder wakes you up again, we’ll be right here.”  
Alec hadn’t even noticed that Max had fallen asleep but the little boy’s eyes were closed. He remembered his little brother Max falling asleep on the chairs in the library years ago and felt a mixture of pain and affection in his chest.  
Even though neither one of their sons shared any blood relation to his brother, there were times when Alec felt himself finding similarities in how they acted. The way Max could fall asleep in the strangest of places in the strangest of positions—whenever Alec went to wake him up in the mornings his head was usually at the wrong end of the bed. Or the way Rafael always insisted on at least three bed time stories, sometimes the same story read twice in a row. Alec knew they were things every kid probably did but it was comforting to see the boys acting in ways that were so familiar to him.  
“Daddy,” Rafael’s quiet voice brought him out of his thoughts, “You look sad.”  
Alec’s eyes flickered briefly to Magnus who looked just as concerned as their son. “I’m fine, buddy. I’m just very sleepy.” Rafael seemed to accept that answer and buried his face into the edge of Magnus’s pillow. Magnus didn’t seem as convinced. “Honestly, I’m just tired,” He promised Magnus. It wasn’t a lie, he was fine. He had Magnus and the boys, things he never thought he’d get to have. He knew his brother wouldn’t begrudge him this kind of happiness.  
Magnus’s cat eyes searched his face for a long moment before he said, “Get some sleep Alexander,” He closed his eyes and sighed, “I told Tessa and Jem I’d meet them for lunch while they were in the city which means you need to be fully awake to handle these two on your own.”


End file.
